Underwriting an application for insurance may involve a significant amount of information gathering, including information regarding complex medical conditions and health issues. Some or all of the information may be gathered by interviewers, including interviewers associated with third-party vendors to an underwriting insurance company. The interviewers may have little medical education or knowledge. Consequently, an interviewer may obtain inadequate medical information and may fail to ask important questions to follow up on significant medical conditions. The interviewer may not understand or record an applicant's responses to some questions. For example, an interviewer may have trouble properly recording medication and disease information, resulting in misspelled or incorrect information.
When the underwriting insurance company receives an application with inadequate documentation, including perhaps inadequate medical documentation, additional information may be required to move an underwriting process forward. An underwriter may be required to request additional information-gathering activities from the interviewing vendor and/or request medical records directly from the applicant's health care providers. This additional research may delay processing of an insurance application by days, weeks, or even months. The applicant for insurance may become impatient and fail to complete the remainder of the insurance application process; and this may result in lost sales.